Outliers

What is an oulier? In statistics, an outlier usually is defined as being greater than 3 standard deviations from the arithmetic mean. Under a normal distribution, 3 standard deviations covers 99.99% of the distribution (oops, my geek is showing).

If anyone else has read the book "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell, you know that it's a commentary of how the successful truly became successful. I'm only half way through the book, but it's a really good read so far. For instance, all of the big software tycoons in silicon valley are incredibly smart individuals (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, the founders of Sun Microsystems, etc.). What's very intriguing is that a lot of these tycoons were born between 1954 and 1957. Why is that? All of these individuals were in college when the first true personal computer was released, the Alltair 8800. They were given some of the first opportunities to have unlimited access to programming and software applications. If you weren't born in this window, you were already at a disadvantage of being a pioneer in computer programming.

What does this mean to me as a parent? My biggest hope is that each of my daughters find their own path to success, whatever they may define it as. Will they end up being outliers? Chances are that they won't be, but I promise that I will help each of my girls hone and nourish their talents. I will do my best to help them improve on their abilities and maybe, if circumstances work out in incredibly lucky fashion, they may very well become outliers.

But even as I write this post, I realize something. They're already outliers. Out of all the hundreds of millions of children born into this world, they're mine. Either by fortune or misfortune, their childhood will be completely unique to anyone else in this world at this time or any other time. They are, and will always be, the best thing to ever happen to me.